WEBlue

The town where we've bought a house is old by American standards and it has some footpaths for walking and a few for bicycles. Most of the footpaths are on town conservation land that's set aside for public recreation.

But there's one little footpath that crosses a bit of our property as well as two of our neighbours' property edges, and everyone has a different story about it. In the old days it was a "cut-through" (I don't know exactly what that means) between two streets. And for some years (also in the old days) there was a proposition to connect the two streets via the path, but that was defeated and is apparently no longer an issue.

People walk between the two streets on the footpath, and some cyclists use it too. One neighbor enjoys and uses the path, one doesn't and would probably like to block the part on his property. Once when we walked it, he told us there was a "better" cut-through further up the hill on our property, but we looked for that and can't find it.

Anyone else have a footpath on their land? No "right to roam" here in the USA where private property reigns. We assume there's some town ordinance somewhere about pedestrian rights of way... but we've done some looking and asking and we can't find any answers.

Pulaski

The answer should be in your property deeds, which should record any rights of way across the property you own. Typically these would be utility and drainage "easements", which are a restricted right for the utility to install, maintain, and repair cable and/or pipe infrastructure, or the city/ county state to maintain drainage ditches and culverts.

You are correct, public paths across private land, are not common in the US, but similar easements do exist for shared driveways, typically for houses built by friends or families and not as part of a normal housing development, and so I suspect that if your property deeds do not record a footpath easement then you are probably entitled to close off the path. If I was you and I wanted to close the path, as a first step, I would put "no trespassing" signs, and see what happens. If the trespassing stops and nobody complains, the after a few months I'd go ahead and install fences. If people complain and/or continue to trespass then a consultation with a lawyer would be the next step.

If you want to monitor possible trespassing I'd use a hunter's auto-activated camera mounted high enough up a tree to prevent easy interference with it.

Speedwell

If people wanted to get really snippy about it, they could attempt to make the court declare the footpath an easement (this would not be done without involving you, though). It may depend on your locality. A friend's mother had a country place that was accessible only by driving across someone else's property, and the new owners of the other property tried to stop her from accessing it that way because they said it was a "nuisance" and they wanted to plant crops on it. They took her to court over it, and she showed that there was a bank that was too steep to allow access to the property directly from the road, and since her proposed easement was on the far edge of the acreage well away from the house and livestock, the judge found in her favor.

Pulaski

That's interesting, because in the states I am familiar with on the east coast, it is not legal to sell any parcel of land that does not have access from a public right of way or a deeded easement across other property to a public right of way.

I suspect that this is the case in most, if not all states, and that your friend's mother was let down by her attorney when she bought the property and the attorney failed to notice the lack of direct access AND easement access, or if the land she drove across had previously been owned by a family member, by her family member when they sold the land without deeding access easement rights for her.

Speedwell

The forest of North Arkansas, Pulaski, and she had purchased the property from the previous owners of the property she had to drive across to get to her piece. And also, on the map she had frontage on a road, but a steep bank and ridge on that side made it impossible for her to actually access the property that way without her primary vehicle being a mountain goat.

Uncle_Bob

lawyers are expensive. Just get some skunks in.

WEBlue

I'll have to dig out our deed and have a look, but I don't recall anything like this coming up when we bought the house. We had observed some easement/boundary problems in a couple of previous properties we were interested in, which had soured us on those properties, so we were on the lookout for this kind of thing.

Hmm, we don't have one of these, but we do have a "bird cam", supposed to photograph birds at the bird feeder. We haven't tried it out yet, but I wonder if that would work?

Actually, we don't mind the foot and bicycle traffic...yet. We're new to the neighbourhood, so we're still feeling our way and seeing how things are. We were just told about the path in August, and have tried it a number of times ourselves. It's been here for a long, long time but it's not on any maps. Only neighbourhood folks seem to know about it or use it, so it's not in wide public use.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

Bob

There's a spot on the edge of town that is a public access to a lake. To get to it, unless you live on that side of the street is impossible though as it's blocked off to houses that aren't lake frontage.

Else where in another town, we looked at a place that had a pathway that was in the back garden that went over the river and along the woods, but unless you lived on the land or the neighbour, you couldn't get to the path as it was private. Though the town did clear a parking spot about a half mile down the road so that folks could go access that pathway, but you'd have to walk the riverbank to get to the pathway and bridge.

WEBlue

Yes, I would agree this is the kind of fascinating thing your real estate lawyer is supposed to warn you about, these quirky historical arrangements that make for complications when new people move in. I thought that was why we hired our lawyer, anyway.

The thing is, I'm not sure I mind the path being there. As I said above, it's not used a lot. We met one woman on the "other" street, the one the path connects ours to. She said she used to insist her teenagers ride their bikes to town via that path, because the alternative is a horrible fast road with no room for cyclists. So in that sense, I'm glad it's there. Plus, not much of it traverses our property.

sir_eccles

Deep in the bowels of officialdom there should be a copy of the original plat of your piece of land or the subdivision it stands in. The township or country recorder's office or department of buildings or land office or department of works (every state does it differently) would be a good place to start.

Your property deeds may refer to a plat number or reference code to look it up.

WEBlue

That's the one wild animal we don't seem to have locally, but I'd rather not--the property isn't big enough.

Yes, we've noticed a few situations like this too. Very puzzling how the "public" is supposed to access these supposedly public spaces.

In the town's conservation forest there are a maze of footpaths that go every which way. You can get a map, but there are a number of smaller paths not marked on the map, and if you follow one of those by mistake you actually end up in someone's back garden. That's happened to us a few times so we've been glared at by the homeowner.

holly_1948

The laws tend to be local, and where not are definitely a State, not a Federal matter.
So experience elsewhere isn't going to help you. If it's important you will have to pay a lawyer. But self help is best, do totally legal things to make your path less attractive (like letting weeds grow).
But really the best is to befriend and get along with people. You never know what the future holds and you might need as many friendships as you can get if we end up in a world war or something.

Real estate laws are very complicated. For example in California if you own a land-locked parcel, and it did not come with an access easement then you are entitled to establish and enforce a vehicular access easement (a track) BUT you have to prove that your land and the land over which you want the easement were owned by the same person at some time in the past. And you just might have to research the land records back into the 19th Century to get your proof.
And then you might discover you already have an easement but not the one you wanted and so lose your right to a new easement.
All very complicated.

md95065

You may not mind, but if you ever want to sell that property then at least some of the prospective buyers may mind and, even though nobody told you about it before you bought it you may find that, now that you do know about it you may be under an obligation to disclose the information.

Better find out now what the actual legal position is.

holly_1948

"Hi, I'm Joe Blow from that brown house over there (points). I see you walking this way often and wanted to ask you that if you ever see anything untoward on my land here, anything that looks wrong or out of place, if you would let me know please?"
Away goes a conversation and, best case, the start of a friendship.
Meanwhile you have just hinted that they are on your by tolerance.

Hiro11

I've had these debates with neighbors when we installed a fence. If you scratch the surface, easement law is fractal in its complexity.

Also, public right of way seems to be one of the key legal differences in property rights between the US and the UK. Bill Bryson talks about this extensively in "Notes from a Small Island". In general, the UK is more liberal about public right of access along "footpaths and "bridleways" (particularly Scotland where by law pretty much anyone can walk pretty much anywhere) while the US has tighter definitions around public thoroughfares or easements. This is likely a reason why rambling is more popular and has more of a history in the UK than in the US. There are notable exceptions, for example all beaches are public by definition in the US while the UK allows private ownership of beaches. Of course, even this is complicated because lots of US beaches play fast and loose with easements while the UK laws are highly interpretive. Also, as others have pointed out, easement law, eminent domain law and right of way law all varies widely by location in the US.